


devil's in the details

by lady_laverty



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Past Rape/Non-con, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 17:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2236656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_laverty/pseuds/lady_laverty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are two boys (another hasn’t been born yet and neither has a little girl, but we’ll get there in time) and one is older and one is younger. They both have black, black hair and one has pitiless eyes and one has eyes full of tears. </p><p> </p><p>  <em>Grant Ward came from somewhere, he didn't create himself. He's not divine.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	devil's in the details

 

 

 

 

 

> "La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas."  
>  ( _"The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist."_ )  
>  ― Charles Baudelaire,  _Paris Spleen_

 

 

 

There are two boys (another hasn't been born yet and neither has a little girl, but we’ll get there in time) and one is older and one is younger. They both have black, black hair and one has pitiless eyes and one has eyes full of tears.

One is hitting and one is taking.

This continues long after the other boy is born.

The boy with eyes full of tears is bitter but he takes the hits.

Someone has to get out of the house of horrors alive.

(He does but Dana doesn't and he howls when they fish out his brother’s body from the well, he tried so hard. His sister is born that year, in the merciless time where his brother gets away with everything, from hitting and stealing, his mother’s stomach swells and he thinks his father had the good idea to get the fuck out of Dodge when he could.)

 

 

\- -

 

 

His sister is born and Maynard doesn't touch her, at all, ever.

Grant would weep for how unfair it is if he wasn't so grateful.

He still weeps though.

Maynard finds out, like a shark attracted to blood in the water.

Weakness attracts him.

 

 

\- -

 

 

Garrett comes to him, like Jesus, like God himself, when he’s in juvie.

 _Confirm what your family thinks_ , he says out loud.

 _Give me your soul_ , he should have said.

 _Yes,_ he says, _yes, yes, yes._

_Lucifer himself smiles around his cup of coffee and men bearing arms like wrathful demons swarm like sharks smelling blood. Like Maynard._

 

 

\- -

 

 

He’s never been religious but his grandmother used to talk about Lucifer and how he was the brightest of all the angels before he hitched a ride out of heaven.

 _He didn’t like that God had given us measly humans the Earth,_ she grizzles in that droning voice of hers and he sits transfixed. _He thought that the angels deserved it._

Grant doesn't deserve anything. He doesn’t. His brother’s fists and nails carved that into his skin. Silvery lines criss-cross his back and he used to think, when he was barely a boy out of toddlerhood, that he was an angel, that they were his wings. That he was one of the angels deserved of the Earth like gramsy said.

(He doesn't deserve anything, not even Buddy, Garrett ( _Lucifer_ ), taught him that lesson the hard way.

He’s weak, always has been, and he can’t control it.

Garrett ( _Lucifer_ ) beats it out of him and he thinks he’s seen the face of God. )

 

 

\- -

 

 

 _“No rest for the wicked_ , _”_ his brother hisses in his ears with a smile on his lips. His grab his hair and he scrabbles for purchase on his bed, Maynard’s hot breath in his face, sour and disgusting.

 _“No rest for the wicked, Grant, and you’re a wicked, wicked boy aren't you?”_ He smiles as he does things to him, things he doesn’t want to think about.

(He flinches when Fitz grabs him and slaps him on the shoulder. _Wicked, wicked boy_ plays over and over in his head and he’s still screaming, hasn't stopped since he was a little boy.)

 

 

\- -

 

 

He jumps out of the plane after Simmons because she reminds him of his sister.

He wonders where she is now.

He hopes she’s better off than he is.

 

 

\- -

 

 

He likes Skye.

She’s the first person he’s ever _liked_.

It’s something immature in him, something that Garrett ( _Luficer_ ) couldn't beat out of him.

The innate need for companionship and love, even he still has it. It marks him as still human, despite the beserker staff’s rage running through his veins.

(He still sleeps with May. He’s not there though; it’s only a mission, only a job. He can still feel sweaty clammy hands on his bodies and it makes him want to vomit. He’s dirty and always has been. He’ll never be clean.)

 

 

\- -

 

 

Ian Quinn shoots Skye and he wants to beat Garrett ( _Lucifer_ ) for the first time in his life.

 

 

\- -

 

 

Lorelei touches him, blasphemes against his body even more than Maynard could ever do.

He still feels the ghosts of her hands and lips on his body and the way his body reacted to her even though he was screaming inside _no stop please stop please please please—_

He continues despite his shaking hands and nightmares.

It's nothing he hasn't been through before. 

 

 

\- -

 

 

He sins repeatedly and endlessly.

His soul was damned to hell before he even got here, before he was even born.

 

 

\- -

 

 

He’s not religious but _Providence_ makes him laugh.

 _God’s intervention in the world_ , indeed.

Nick Fury is the God of his intelligence agency, but not even his all-seeing eyes could see Grant or Garrett ( _Lucifer_ ).

 

 

\- -

 

 

The med pod is supposed to float and he gives Simmons ( _Rose_ ) and Fitz ( _Dana_ ) the best chance they could get despite how bad it seems.

He owes it to Dana, this bit of penitence.

(He should have been thrown down the well instead and maybe if he had been all this would never have happened.)

 

 

\- -

 

 

Skye stares at him with hate before Melinda May beats him down.

He deserves it but it doesn't stop it hurting.

 

 

\- -

 

 

_“But you devoted your entire life to a deranged narcissist who never gave a damn about anyone, and now he's dead. You've got the rest of your life to wrestle with the question who are you without him?”_

He’d laugh and laugh and never stop laughing if it didn’t feel like his entire being was being split in two from his vocal cords down to his nailed feet ( _like Jesus_ ).

He’s nothing more than a speck of dust on this godforsaken Earth.

 

 

\- -

 

 

Colonel Talbot has his men beat him and he smiles and giggles around the blood in his teeth and spits on the ground at the feet of his interrogators.

This is nothing more than a game of tit for tat and he’s already won.

He has nothing to give.

 

 

\- -

 

 

It could be days or weeks he’s been in the darkened cell but his stubble has grown into a beard and he runs his hands through it, through the harshness of it.

Dana never hit puberty. Dana never hit ten years old.

Dana never hit anybody.

(Grant did. Grant hit Dana. With Maynard watching, sick fascination on his face and that Grant cries silently as Dana stares at him with love despite what he was doing.)

 

 

\- -

 

 

They send him to shrinks when Talbot realises he’s got nothing to give.

 _Tell me about Garrett_ , the first shrink asks on their first session.

He smiles and shows her the scar on his shoulder where the first bone poked through the skin from the first bone break that Garrett ( _Lucifer_ ) gave him.

She transfers out the next week, and he continues with all the shrinks that they send until they run out and Director Coulson _himself_ comes down to see him.

 _“What the fuck are you doing, Ward?”_ The Director asks him harshly, slamming files down on the table that he’s handcuffed to.

He smiles at him.

 _“What I’m told,_ sir _,”_ he replies, fisting his hands on the table, the skin where the cuffs sit is red and swollen. He’d been pulling at it during the day. They don’t let him have free rein on the days that visitors are coming.

He thinks it’s their attempt at stopping him attempting to shank his visitors.

He appreciates their attempts but if he wanted to shank someone, nothing could stop him, not even cuffs.

 

 

\- -

 

 

The Director doesn’t come back for months after that.

There’s no new shrinks.

He appreciates it.

 

 

\- -

 

 

Skye visits once.

She stands outside his cell and her lips curl into a sneer.

She tells him he’s disgusting and that he’s never getting out of this prison alive and maybe not even then.

He smiles and thinks, _I taught you well_.

 

 

\- -

 

 

He gets bored of the monotony after the seventh year.

The Director has come and gone many times, staring at him like he’s something to _pity_.

Guards come and go, many leaving farewell presents in the form hits and kicks in places the weekly check-ups don’t venture.

He smiles sweetly at them when they walk their last walk down the hall that his lone cell is on and blows them a kiss.

 _No rest for the wicked,_ indeed.

 

 

\- - 

 

They find his body hours after the last guard rotation, lying in his bed, eyes vacant and wide, a sweet smile on his face. 

His clothes are folded neatly, as usual, but there's a note on top of them. 

_I'm sorry._

 

\- -

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick fic that I did and wanted to post.


End file.
